332 THE EMPTY QUARTER

oppressive afternoon heat. All day long we had seen no
living thing except a pair of Wheatears in the neighbour-
hood of our mid-day camp. Death reigned supreme. The
scanty bushes were scorched and withered, with, here and
there,a tuft of green stuff surviving miraculously to be cropped
by our camels as they passed, though they were almost too
thirsty to eat anything. A pile of whitened bones and a pair
of horns, black and gracefully curved, betrayed the scene of a
gazelle's last agony. We passed by the hole of a desert
mouse, whose in-going tracks told us it was still at home, but
we were too tired to dig it out. The gravel-strips amid the
dunes and ranges of 'Awariq shone again with the mirage.
The heat was appalling, unbearable. Yet there was nothing
to do but set our teeth and march on till, about mid-after-
noon, we had the satisfaction of passing out of the 'Awariq
tract into the parallel shallow valleys of Bani Ma'aridh bor-
dered on either hand by low ridges of waving sand. Little
was changed, indeed, but the name. The dull monotony of
the stricken land was almost more irksome than the blazing
sun. See the camels, how they thirst! said Salim; we must
surely * snuff ' many of them to-night, for they can bear no
more without water. We were again at a crisis of our, for-
tunes and the possibility of a breakdown had to be envisaged;
but we had something in hand. Retreat being wholly out of
the question, we were ourselves in harmony—no slight matter
in such circumstances—and we had plenty of water provided
we continued to use it sparingly. We could afford to dose the
camels with enough to cool their brains, and that would make
all the difference.

The main Sahma plain was now far away to the left and
invisible, but offshoots of it were still much in evidence as we
marched south-west along the first broad valley of Bani
Ma'aridh. The rain of the previous week had not visited this
district and, to judge by the conditions of the Abal and Hadh
bushes, it must have been years since it had had any moisture
to absorb. Perhaps 20 years or more, suggested Salim.
A single Wheatear seemed to have the whole area to itself,
and there was some very old gazelle and Oryx dung. But
there was also something stilX more interesting—the frag- |